Bought a new PSU and voila, system powers up and boots.

Lucky to not have damaged the motherboard with my blunderings with the
surplus Dell PSU.

Thanks to all for their help!

"steve d. podleski" <steve.d.podleski@boeing.com> wrote in message
news:J8s5oB.6x4@news.boeing.com...
> While I was working on my pc, the system shut down as if the power failed.
> I tried to turn the system back on but nothing happened. The only sign of
> power was a green light on the motherboard. I replaced the power supply
with
> a used Dell power supply that I got at a surplus store; this used power
> supply had an extra bundle of blue and while cable with a small connector
> that, I guess, needs to be connected to the motherboard but I could not
find
> a compabatible socket; the old power supply had only one connector to the
> motherboard.This replacement power supply had no effect including not
> lighting the green light on the motherboard.
>
> Also, when the computer was functional, I would get occasional warnings
> from the BIOS that the fan had 0 rpms but the after a few seconds, the fan
> rpm was back to full value; I did not see this warning before the compuer
> shut down.
>
> This system is over 5 years old with a 1.1GHz Athlon, ASUS motherboard and
> 300W power supply and 768MB Crucials (sp?) RAM.
>
> Any ideas?
>
>